Some day I'll get back on a more regular schedule for writing...but for now it's catch as catch can...
Some quick capsule reviews:
Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood as a young man who "collects" stuff from his life (not the usual stuff, mind you, dirt, coins, food, werid shit like that). When he comes across a picture of the grandfather he never knew but was named for he begins a search that takes him to Russia. This touching and wonderfully made film is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schrieber. It's very obvious that Schrieber has a love for the material from the artful way he handles it. Why this film got overlooked last year is beyond me. It's now on DVD.
If we needed another remake of King Kong then Peter Jackson was definitely the right man for the job. Unfortunately he seems to gotten bit by the "George Lucas bug" in that he didn't seem to have anyone to tell him "no". At just over three hours long, this fun film is bloated by about an hour. The set up seems to work well enough, but it takes forever to get to Skull Island and then they're not only there for an eternity, but the action sequences sometimes seem to go on longer than they should (the most "offensive" one is the dinosaur stampede that winds up turning into the police car chase from The Blues Brothers). It's well acted and artfully directed. It's obvious Jackson has a love for his material...but it may have been a bit too much love.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe keeps itself from getting too bogged down in Kong-like problems by sticking to the high points of the story and moving along without embellishing. While it's mostly a "kiddie" version of The Lord of the Rings, it's still highly entertaining and worth watching.
My family bought our first VHS VCR in 1981 and promptly joined a rental store called "Underground Video" (so named because they were located in the basement of another store). Their policy at the time, when there really wasn't a rental market and the concept of low priced sell-thru was about as far in the future as Harry Potter, was that you paid a $100 deposit and could take out anything in their library and then return it and continue doing so. If you wanted to own a particular film, you could keep it, but then in order to rent again you'd have to leave another deposit. So...the first film we owned (after maybe a year of renting) was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother...a VHS tape I still have to this day...and now I can finally "retire" it as FOX Home Video has just released the film on DVD (and not only does it have an anamorphic widescreen transfer, but a commentary by actor-writer-director Gene Wilder as well). I wonder if the tape's worth anything??
Bwhahahahahahaha (laughing at his own stupid comment).
Lastly for today is a quick review of the first episode of Season Two (or Season 28...depending on how you'd like to look at it) of Doctor Who. While the Christmas special got David Tennant off to a fine start as Doctor Number 10, this episode tries to cram way too much into such a short time frame. Acting as a sequel of sorts to "The End of the World" from Season One, "New Earth" features the return of two characters from that episode, a new race of nun-nurse-Cats, zombies, clones, New New York (stolen from Futurama I guess), multiple body switches and a mystery to boot. While it's a heck of a lot of fun, it will probably wind up as being one of the lesser episodes by season's end. The thing that keeps everything moving is the acting and writing. If you liked Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, you should also like David Tennant...he's the same, yet very different. Billie Piper gets to do a few new things as Rose as well. It's fun as I said, but next week's episode (featuring ninjas, werewolves and Queen Victoria) looks to have a bit more substance.
I hope to be back later in the week with something...
Be seeing you.
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